Facebook Live Q & A Replay with Jim's Group CEO, Jim Penman and Joel Kleber - May 2024

Hi, everyone, and welcome to another Ask Jim. We're at training week. It's getting a lot colder, Jim. I know we've got a few people down from Queensland and stuff and we've got to apologise.

Yeah, they're really suffering, those soft Queenslanders. Mel, you gotta have hair in your chest.

He's already started off by an utter. So there we go. Queenslanders, jump on board and leave him.

We always make fun of Queenslanders. Banana benders.

The banana benders. What do they call us down here? I know they're called out. You have a few down there. Mexicans. That's the one they call us down here.

Dan Andrews, whips, I think after the lockdown.

Dan Andrews Whips. Exactly right. So what we'll do, guys, is we do this where we talk down here. If you are watching online, guys, leave your questions and comments. We'll get some, as we always try to do, but we want people just come up to the microphone and ask Jim a question. If you do leave them online, I will get to them as well. And we do have prizes for everyone tonight, so if you do ask a question on the microphone at any stage, you will get one of these prizes at the end as well. So please start. Does anyone want to kick us off before we read them out? Good man. Just come up anytime. Yep, no worries.

Why did you add Jim's building inspections to Jim's group? Because somebody came to me with the idea and looked like a good guy. I mean, that was Paul Cummington. It's. It's not something I actually thought of. Yeah, but it's a good division because it's. We talk about a fear factor in gyms. If people are afraid of something going wrong, they'll turn to call us and, you know, something like building inspections. I mean, I had friends who bought a unit. Yeah. Eric and Jim bought a unit, lidar, and they didn't get Jim's building inspection to check it out and it turned out that it was seriously defective. And it's taken them like four years bankrupting legal fees to actually figure out to get it fixed. And it's still going to be fixed shortly. Years and years of legal machinations. He's not got Jim's building inspections to check it out. If we didn't spot the problem, we'd be responsible for the whole thing. And we have fixed jobs worth hundreds of thousands of dollars when we found we missed a problem, but we very rarely miss. So it's a great division. It's a wonderful division. We just Used them ourselves. My daughter and son in law just bought a house in Thornbury. So want to know how to check out is any good. I said Jim's building inspector. So I looked up, found a really good guy locally, 4.8 rating. Put him on fantastic job and the Jim's conveyance to do the work. And they've got a Jim's handyman coming and do some fixing up. All of them great operators.

And you hope the franchisees do a good job as well. Five star. You'd hope they know who it's for.

I tell you something, if I see somebody with at least a 4.7 rating, I know they're going to be good. They really. I've never ever been disappointed.

I would say like we did an interview with Paul. So Paul, if you type in Paul Comerford, Jim's Building Inspections. We did a long form interview with Paul and he talks about how he started the division back in 2011. It's pretty impressive. He went from 2011 to now 150 plus building inspection.

Frenchman. By far the biggest business of its type in the country. By far the biggest. There's been a great division. A lot of that's leadership though. I mean building inspections is obviously a good business for us, but you've got to have the right person at the helm. Paul's just really good at what he does.

The way he decided on it, he went around to an auction and he wrote Jim's Building Inspections on a napkin with some other people and said, which one would you go with? And they all said Jim's. And we didn't even do it. So that was his little story on how to do the research for it. So really good question. Cool. Who wants to come up yet? A pan up here? Just come up anytime.

Yeah, Jim. Nearly 72 years old, you told me. Yep, 10 minutes ago. I'm just wondering in terms of longevity in what you do and that, what makes you keep going? What incentivises you, who've been really successful to want to keep doing what you're doing? Well, I love what I do for a start. It's really, really fun. It's like business is like playing a giant computer game with endless numbers of levels and you get paid playing it. I mean, that's a pretty good deal for a lifestyle, isn't it? But apart from anything else, it's not the case. Why do I keep going? Why would I stop? I feel fantastic. I'm loving it. I'm full of energy, full of beans. We play actually, he beat me 21 last night play racquetball. But I'm very fit. At least half an hour of exercise a day. Watching my diet just lead a really, really healthy, good life. I don't believe in retirement. I just don't believe in it. I reckon I could still make a living as a mine contractor if I needed to. I'm fit. In fact, at the weekend I go off and dig potatoes and dig my garden. A lot of our own food I actually grow myself. Why would you stop? Yep. And what about the helping other people developing? Well, you get a sense of purpose out of what you do, of course. Yeah. I got more than 5,000 families. I think one of the things that concerns me most, I'll probably live another 20 years and I'll probably retire in 20 years time when I die. But one thing that does concern me is to make sure that there's something in place with somebody whose people are really ethical in charge when I'm gone. Because there's so many ways I can look after people and I really do. And I'm very accessible and if I get a problem with somebody, then I can do something about it and I will fix it, whatever it is, even if it means, you know, like I had an email today, just about a couple of hours back where there's a franchisee from Pepitrol which hasn't gone very well as a division and it's one of the very few. Now we've offered her another franchise to change to cleaning, to change to dog wash. She didn't want to, she wants to walk away. And I said, look, I feel really bad about it. I'm so sorry it's happened. We're going to wipe out all your feed for the month. We'll backdate it. If you want to continue looking after your clients as independent, you'd be very welcome to. Happy to give you a reference. You just got to treat people decently. I know there's systems around where if you lead the franchise partner to the term, they'll keep on charging you the fees for the rest of the time. There's some terrible systems around and now it's isn't. It's a good one.

Don't worry, Jim will be around for a long time. There's AI, there's holograms and stuff. So we've got enough data.

He's planning to do an AI version of me.

We can already make him say certain things with the digital avatar.

Well, with all these recordings you can, you could just about, you could do it fairly well by now. Couldn't you?

You could.

You asked me to spend anything. There's something in Ask Jim that would Absolutely.

Very true. You got a question, guys? Just come up to the microphone as well. Please interrupt us. We'll get to some here, but just better if you come up.

Hi.

What in your opinion is the most unusual division in gems?

Unusual division.

Well, which is unusual Test and Tag, for example, which is a super successful division. I didn't even knew it existed. I didn't know there was such a thing where you go out and you test, you know, electrical cords and so forth. So in that sense. And somebody came to me and said, hey, I've got a, you know, I've got a business. I'm working full time in Albury Wodonga. And I thought, wow, that sounds like that's a really good business. You get so many people, you can get enough business to have a full time. We've got five people in all Burdonga now. So it's, it's. I don't know. I love it. I gotta say. My heart still bleeds green. I have a thing about mowing. I just love gardening. Somebody's asking me today about, you know, which, which division to go into when I was chatting with some of the trainees here and I said, what do you like doing? Because I had to try and I don't. I don't knock other divisions, but I had to try carpet cleaning once and I hated it. I really, really hated doing it. Whereas to me, getting outside and mowing lawns and gardening is fun. So you gotta do what you love.

Where's the newer division start? I wanna call them Strange. Are they newer ones? Like there's what have been a couple of newer ones that have started, ah, Scratch and Dent.

It's a good new one that started off Mobile Mechanic. Both of those going well. What other new ones have we got lately?

Remedial Massage started. They got their first Frandra Zine training.

Right. Okay.

Home care's gonna be starting too as well.

So home care is good. That's looking after. But more employment one because the NDIS rates aren't good enough for our level. You can't make 70 bucks an hour out of making somebody coffee and stuff.

And do you want to tell people real quickly just who don't know how does a new division start if they want to do a new division once they become a franchisee?

New division basically mostly comes from somebody contacting me and saying I'm interested in a new division. And I look at it first of all, it can't conflict with an existing division. I had an inquiry today from somebody wanted starting something with waterproofing showers. And I've said, I'm sorry, I can't do that because that service belongs to bathrooms. So we can't do it. Then you've got to have a look at. Is there enough demand, the gyms model? It's not. We don't take a very high level of fees. The average fees is about 6% of turnover. So it's not a lot of fees. And that's got advertising and support and all kinds of things like that. So it's not. So you have to have volume. So we want a division that's got the potential, at least 100 franchisees. That would be our goal. So you need that. And then most important of all, if that's all passed, you've got to look at the person doing it. Okay. What's their background? Do they know the industry or without that, are they. What are they? If they're a franchisee, how much money are you turning over? If you're turning over less than, say, $3,000 a week, wouldn't even consider it. You have to be successful. You have to five, six thousand dollars a week, minimum. You have to have a great customer service record. So a lot of our divisions come from within. Like laundry started three years ago last month. That was Bill Cobaglu, who's a successful cleaning.

It's his wife's idea. Because I'll get a text message if I don't say it's his wife's idea.

Okay, Bill's wife. But that's from somebody who's been successful in the clean division. He's a great franchisor. So you've got a great person. And I never thought of laundry. That was when they came up with. I thought, all right, okay, that sounds like a reasonable idea. How would you do it? But more than that, I believed in build.

A recent one is a good example, is that Lance has been with us for 18 months. Really well, as a mowing franchisee, then coming in to do driving school.

Yes.

So that's a really good example. You met him in training Simone, so he's. He's a really good story.

A lot of the early guys who became franchisors did it because they were pioneers in the very elite gyms. These days, an established mowing regional franchise costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. But there's always the opportunity to start a new division or get involved in the ground floor because we're starting divisions all the Time.

Now, what's the sort of cost involved with it? Because it's definitely changed the model. Do you want to maybe just tell me?

We do a thing called a divisional rental and basically apart from you got to write the manual and do the website and there's a fee which is 4,000amonth, of which the first six months gets paid up front. In reality it's more like 8 because there's compliance discounting. So it's about $24,000 paid up front and that's the first six months fees covered. That's it. But you don't own it, you have to grow it. And what we want to see is 30 franchisees within three years. And once you achieve that, it's yours. We give it, you can, you can sell it, you can build it, you can do whatever you like with it. That's the new model. And since we've done that and we run ongoing seminars, we've got a.

Every month I do a big meeting.

And stuff and they do a zoom meeting and next month they've got a seminar down.

Divisional conference.

Yeah, divisional conference, that's right, an all day conference. And that's only six months. So it's been a good model actually and we're doing very well with new divisions right now. Absolutely.

If you've got a question, guys, feel free to come up to the microphone and just interrupt us and go, go for it. Hi, Jim.

If there was one thing you could.

Change when you were starting out, what would it be? I spent nine months arguing with lawyers over the contract. Frankly, knowing what I now know, I just sit down and write something. I mean, really what I thought was fair though I didn't know that then. What I should have done is got more into technology from the beginning. That's been the great power. We ran the office so inefficiently. In the early days, that was very, very difficult. We get into technology easier and quicker. We keep up with it better. I been a lot more attention on that. It's been a huge mind changer. Look, in the beginning, back in say the 90s, we were one of a number of companies in this space ourselves, vip, others around, we just absolutely streaked ahead. And I do think one of the reasons is because we've now got the funds to invest in technology, which a lot of people can't. And so much of what we do, like our customer service systems to do with surveys and so forth, and ability to choose the jobs you want, all that kind of stuff is very heavily based on technology.

Good question. You Got a question, guys? Feel free to come up. If not, I'll read out a name from here, but just please feel free to interrupt us here. There's Chris from Jim's mowing. He had a question for Jim. Is Chris here? Is he shot off? Wish he was here because this one would have probably got a prize. But I'll read it out for you because Jim's a history buff. He says, why do you think the ancient Greek population failed to continue growing at a rate it had when it was at its highest peak?

This is biohistory, which is this subject here, which I did my PhD thesis on and I run a research institute on. Basically what happens is when societies become wealthy and urban, they suffer a change in character, which is to do with the biology of how animal populations react to food limitation and shortages and so forth. So a wealthy urban society just tends to decay by its very nature. Now, whether it applies to ancient Greece, ancient Rome or the modern world, it's the same kind of process for the same reason. The point of my research is to continue to work out, we know pretty well what it is. We've done a lot of work with rats on food restriction and we're trying to work out how to reverse engineer it so we can actually produce a treatment, a drug, a pheromone, whatever it is, to try and reverse this process, which would help people to be harder working, more enterprising, better parents wanting to have children. The baby bust is a big concern to me, but yeah, that's kind of like the overwhelming moral purpose of my life. I certainly have a big intense belief in gyms and what we do, but with this particular thing here, we could change the world.

Where can people learn more about that online, Jim? There's a website, obviously.

Yeah, biohistory.org go to that and you'll see some videos in some books that you can download and stuff. Just preparing a new version of this. We've actually made a lot of discoveries lately in our research team. Got a better idea of what causes some of these things to happen.

Seems to be a trending topic because obviously musk is and a few others are really talking about it a lot.

People are very panicking about it. You've got the fertility rate, which needs to be at 2.1 to maintain population in say South Korea, it's got down about 0.7 or 0.8. Japan, China, it's way, way, way under replacement level. The only western country that's actually maintaining its population by birth rate is Israel. And that's likely because they've got so many Orthodox Jews and Muslim Palestinians who actually have a higher birth rate. So it's a big problem. It's really getting worse and the birth rates continue to drop. And in the end it's the death of a society and we're going to go the same way if we don't do something about it.

Got a question for Jim, guys. Please feel free to come up and ask him. Yep, go for it. Hi Jim. As we all sort of head out on the road and start our life as a franchisee, what's a few words of advice you could offer us?

Look, obviously you've got to look after your customers. Well, that's pretty basic. But look, the one single thing that matters the most is you've got to constantly look at everything you do and say, how can I do it better? It doesn't matter how good you are in the beginning, you can be pathetic. I did so many stupid things in my career, but I am endlessly self critical. Every day we look at what are we doing, how can we improve, how can we go better? And people come and tell me you've made a mistake. Okay, I take it, yes, I made a mistake. What can I do? How can I stop it happening again? What's the lesson you can learn? That is the big thing. Be self critical, driven to improve. And the difference between me as an impoverished mowing contractor, you know, $35,000 in debt and where I am now, it's not one thing, it's not one idea. It's not. I suddenly think, oh, what are they? Franchises and multi million. It doesn't work that way. You do thousands and thousands of little things. And one of the reasons that I love, I like franchisees to contact me and in fact not only allow them but I encourage them and I push them, as you know, through training. Contact me, email me, phone me, let me know what's going on. It's because so often I get great ideas from the cold face as to what we can do better. I don't think a week goes by I don't get some good idea from somebody, particularly a franchisee, how we can improve.

Thanks. Very good question guys. Feel free, just jump up and ask it. Go for it.

Hi Jim.

Question is, for the so many years, how have you seen the franchisees with the new generation?

Have they become more enterprising, have they become more outgoing as compared to few years back or how has it been with the franchisees? I'd love to say Australians have become more enterprising. I don't think so. I think frankly, Australians, native born Australians, are becoming more and more weak and spineless and lazy without any respect to anybody here who's obviously not in that group. Alright. But more and more of our franchisees are actually new immigrants and immigrants tend to have a better work ethic. English might not be perfect, but we do really, really well with people who just have an urge to do well. You know, one of the problems too with the younger generation of Australians, they don't want to get their hands dirty. They really want to sit at a desk and be a manager and play with a computer in a cubicle. That's their kind of goal in life. To me that seems crazy. Why don't you get out there and have your own business and do a service industry and stuff? I've got canvases on my hands and I'm proud of that. I like it, actually. That's from my gardening. Why don't you have people look to the trades, the kind of money you can make? I mean, we talk about 70 bucks an hour as a sort of, at minimum level, $70 per hour. How much does the average Australian make? That means the average Jim's franchisee turns over, is clearing well over. Well over the average Australian income. And you don't need any degree or qualifications or years of schooling apart from being basically literate, which we all are, to do that. So I'd love to say that we're all getting better, but I don't know that's the case. It's just fortunate that we haven't. We have pretty good immigration policy and we get really good people from all over the world.

Yeah, good question.

Look at, look at the, look at our group around here. All over. What have we got from. Where are you from? India, Sri Lanka, South Africa. All right, okay.

He's wearing an all blacks jersey.

It's a bit South African. I should know, shouldn't I? The nat. Yeah, but all over somebody perhaps China or something like that out the back there we have people from all over.

But we had someone from Kiribati, which is right on the date line. And then we had someone from Tuvalu, which is like the third most everywhere.

We have great discussions at training, actually. I get people who are a lot of people who are Muslims or Sikhs, Hindus, people all over the world, very multicultural.

So I remember the ladies writing your new book asked me for like a standard demographic of a gyms franchisee. It was hard to give it because I couldn't, you know, she's asking particular nationality this and that and it was just so broad in terms of ages, young, these sorts of things. The common things were like family and mortgage and stuff like that. But outside of that it's a very big mix, isn't it?

Yeah, it is.

Anyway, more questions for Jim. Just jump up and ask if we're.

Talking about multiculturalism and internationalization of the.

Brand from Pioneer for Germany.

Pioneer for Germany. Do you still feel very cautious about the idea of internationalization or is it starting to become something that could be more and more likely?

Well, Simone, I think we've got potentially a good person to head it up but it's very difficult to translate our culture overseas people tend to water it down. There's some very fiercely egalitarian aspects of gyms, which is very Australian, New Zealandish, much more than other countries. We don't like people who are basically harsh bosses who push people around. And our whole system is designed to be franchisee empowering franchisees. So your challenge is going to be in Germany to try and recreate that very Australian culture. And I think Germans tend to be a lot more hierarchical. Maybe it's not as much as in the past, but that's my impression.

But someone who's actually grown up in this culture that goes and takes it.

If you can jimmify them, that'll be.

I will do that. I have a second question that's also related to, well, not related to, totally related to that. But one of the things that's always fascinated me about your model, I think in terms of metaphors and analogies and you know, we always talk about growing a business and you seem to take that very, very literally. You know, we come here, we plant a seed and the lead system works like so that we don't over water the new plant. And you, you know, all of the people and all the things I've heard about this week work towards helping that plant to get to a point where it can actually survive by itself. Was that an intentional decision or is it just sort of an intuitive thing? Because you love gardening.

Well, personally I like gardening. That was an obvious thing to go into. It was my part time student job. But in a way, probably the genesis of the way we think about things in gyms comes from the Bible. It comes from Jesus washing his disciples feet. The idea of servant leadership. The idea if you lead you're not the boss, you're not there. People. Yeah, people you look after. Like I'm not the boss of franchisees, I'm a service provider to them as clients. So that kind of idea and you know, washing disciples feet, that was a very strange thing for Jesus to do because it was very, it was a very degrading job in the actuary while washing somebody's feet because they got really thirsty and it was something that really slaves or very low grade people would do occasionally. A really revered rabbi, which Jesus was of course his disciples might wash his feet as a sign of respect. But for Jesus to wash his disciples feet was very radical. And that kind of influence, that kind of thinking is very pervasive in what we do. I'm not saying it doesn't apply to other faiths as well. There's other comparisons that you could make as well. But certainly for me that was a large part of what drove it.

Well, I started here with really a high opinion of the brand and it's just gotten even higher and higher since I've been here. So thank you very much for what I've experienced so far.

Thank you. Simone, anyone? That's a question for Jim guys. Please feel free to come up and ask. If not, I'll run through some more of here. Actually got a couple online Jim, we just want to keep them engaged. So Firus has gone. Hi guys. I'm proud to tell you that I bought a second cleaning franchise. So he's in Jim's cleaning bought a second one. He says this has changed his life for the better which is everyone luck, which is great. Great to hear. We got a guy on YouTube so we stream on YouTube as well. He says as an ex employee of a franchisee, is there any advice you have for someone wanting to start off? I felt my franchisee boss was going down the wrong route. He was in Queensland but now in wa. So he wants to. He was a Frank, he was an employee of a gym, now wants to be a gym himself. So what would you say to him?

Well, you're starting a long way ahead because you know the system from the inside, you know what it's like. But look, in reality most people can get a franchise because you're not talking about a big investment at all. You know, maybe something like 25, 30,000 and sometimes we offer vendor terms and so forth. So if you've got what it takes, that's the thing to jump from being an employee to the boss is very small. There's a couple people here today, I don't know if you're in the audience but who have been in other franchise systems like one Subway and one was, what is it? Midas Mufflers, wasn't it Midas?

The Tyre Service Centre.

The tyres. Yeah. Okay. But the amount of money that you have to spend to get in those kind of businesses is quite a lot. The great thing about a service franchise, you can start with very little. Like Dan Cole. Did you hear him this afternoon? Tomorrow.

He's on tomorrow.

He's on tomorrow. Okay, you'll hear tomorrow. Dan is a guy who's a high school dropout and he started in his, I think, early 20s. He bought a lawnmower franchise with a great little trepidation. Never been in business before. Worked at McDonald's though, so good training. So he just managed to scrape the money together. He's now multi millionaire and he's only in his early 30s. I can't imagine how wealthy he's going to be, but it kind of gets to my age. But that's the point. You can start with anything. You don't have to have a lot of capital. You just have that attitude of, what can I do? How can I improve it? How can I do it better? What mistake did I make? You can't be too sensitive about it. You just got to keep on doing. And then there's no ceiling. In a normal boss, in a normal job, there's a ceiling and somebody above you will decide how far you go. But with us, there's no upper limit. We think we've created more multi millionaires than any company in this country because it's a low entry point. But whatever you achieve is up to you.

Dan's just had twins, so congratulations to him because he needs to be a millionaire to keep up with his family. He's got around four kids now, so I'm sure they'll be my franchisees in 18.

He actually gives me the credit. He said my. My various speeches in favor of children and so forth inspired him to.

Jim told me to do it and that's what's happening happen now. So that's two kids right now.

Good man. He follows the model every way, including breeding. I've got 10 kids actually, and I'd like to have had more if I could, but I've got some grandchildren. I've got three grandchildren now, which is really great, and two more on the way. So my children are starting to do their job.

We've got one more online from Luca Neil, real quick. He says, what advice would you give to a franchisee who would like to help other franchisees not only grow their business but also support their mental health? So Luke's passionate about that. He's a franchisee up in Queensland.

Well, become a Franchisor, You've got the right attitude, that's for sure, Luke. I mean, if you like helping people, it's kind of like the core of a Jim's Franchisor is you've got to enjoy helping other people because that's what you do. You ring people up, you've got to help them with inquiries. And most of them do it very, very, very well. They really care. You know, we had a. Just to give you an example in New Zealand when there was a lockdown. Green Acres, our major competitor over there, we are bigger than them now, but they actually made their franchises were unable to do their job for two months and they made them pay fees, which is lunatic. Now, anybody in gyms who suggest that the thing would be carted off the loony bin, I mean, seriously, it's just. But you know what? I actually have franchisors arguing with me and saying, well, there's a sort of a partial lockdown. What if we suspend them and stop charging them fees? And I say, well, look, you know, it's not really justified. They actually can work. So my franchisors are arguing with me that I'm being. Because they're so. They're so pro franchisee, even by my standards. And I'm very proud of that, actually. Whenever I hear stories of franchisors going above and beyond, I'm so happy. So if Luke's got that kind of attitude, I'd like to know what he's making. I like to look at his customer service record. But if he's got that kind of attitude, then be a great franchisor.

Absolutely. If you've got any questions, guys, feel free to come up and jump up. Anyone there? I'll keep reading out from the list, but you get your question 100% answered when you come up. And also a prize, so it's easy to do. Hi, guys. I got one. Well, out of the everything everyone's talking. I seen one of your posters up in the training thing.

Who's your favorite Star wars character? Palpatine. Albert Palpatine, Absolutely. I've got a big thing about villains. I really love the bad guys. You know, Montgomery Burns, Palpatine. Anybody's a bad guy has my support. Green Goblin in. In Spider Man. Yeah. Gotta go for the band. I seen the seniors.

Darth Vader up there, and it just made me laugh. Oh, we burnt your face.

Well, Darth Vader's good, but. But Darth Vader's kind of the sidekick I like. I like the emperor. He's the guy that actually turns through being a senator. I like the sequels in Star wars because you see him as, like, the good guy. Remember that scene where he's sort of. He's in the sunshine and his hair's blowing? He looks like the perfect good guy, and you know he's going to become the evil emperor. I mean, that's the kind of guy you can really admire. I mean, seriously, all the machinations and the intrigues and the political murders and all the rest of it. What a great character. The only thing that really bugs me about this is in the final in Last Jedi, when he actually tries to get Darth Vader to kill his only son. Now, how can anybody smart enough to become emperor of the galaxy be stupid enough to tell his main character, who's more powerful than me, to kill your own. His son? I mean, who would believe that? I think George Lucas was just off his planet when he. You got to see it from the bad guy's point of view. You've got to understand it from their point of view. To me, you reckon Disney will do them justice? I don't know. I never liked the other stuff. I like the sequels. I like the first two. You know, New Hope and Empire Strikes Back to sign appeal. I love the way that Anakin Skywalker gets turned to the dark side. That's really a fun trope. But, I mean. But also, you see, I mean, the Jedi. What sort of insane idea is that? Why can't they have kids? I mean, to me, if you can't have a family, then it's a problem. There's a real problem. I think family is everything. I really want my kids to grow up after me. I want to see them grow up. No sex, no love. No. I mean, give that a break. No way. He's also got the good question. Definitely a price, that one. First prize.

He covered a few there. It was good. Go for it, Jim. That was actually going to be my.

Question from the training this morning.

What do you do to celebrate May 4th? You sound like a Star wars fan.

Actually, the big celebration I have around this time of the year is when I wet my wife. That was 23 years ago, April 20th. That's a. That's a transforming event that changes everything. Your partner and stuff. Yeah, I like Star Wars. A lot of Star Trek, too. I'm a typical nerd. I mean, really.

But we always just do, like, a video on TikTok or something with him and he talks about it and. Yeah, yeah, pretty much the same thing. What you're saying now we put on TikTok and stuff with that on the day. So we've done it a few times. Yeah, someone's giving him some Funk Pops and he's ripped them open and stuff like that. And people who collect those things get real angry online when he rips the box open and stuff. So, yeah, we've done it as well. So the other thing that we saw was some of your April Fool's videos.

Which were quite humorous. Yes. And the rumor came out that you.

Do quite a good Mr. Burns impersonation. Yeah.

Do you feel.

The haircut too for it as well?

Oh, I love Monty Burns. I mean, isn't he classic? Isn't he. Isn't he a great character? How could you not love Monty Burns? You know, like one of my favorite episodes is when they actually steal a trillion dollar banknote and they end up giving it to Fidel Castro. So he naturally manages to save. He's just about to become a capitalist and everything else and he gets this trillion dollars. And so now he can go and being socialist forever. And then Burns and his compatriots fly in a raft to get to the United States and he has this wonderful speech. He says, if it's a crime to love your country, then I'm guilty. And if it's a crime to steal a trillion dollars and give it to your country's enemies, well, I'm guilty of that as well. And if it's a crime to bribe a jury to acquit me, I'll shortly be guilty of that. What a great character. I would listen to the Simpsons when I was in my office doing work or something like that. And then if I hear Monty Burns, I'd. Out of here. What's Monty up to? Who's my favourite character?

Even got the same haircut. So that's what.

And just about as much hair.

Really good question there.

I'd love that.

But guys come up and ask you.

If anything this guy get a prize too.

Anything, Mr. Burns. Star Wars.

Anything about villains.

I'll write that down.

Definitely think anything about villains.

It's a passion subject, isn't it?

But, you know, villains are good. I mean, villains are just. When I was at school, we had a. We had a. We had. It's like a review. And I was. They did a. A skit, a short play which was like a Monaraldia play. And I was the evil guy, Munro Murgatroyd. And I used to go down into the. Into the. Into the shed underneath the house and practice this fiendish laughter. Like that and the neighbours, what the hell's going on with your television over there?

Makes for a good TikTok clip that way.

And it was. It's so fun. And actually, in fact, later on, when I became a Christian, we used to go and entertain the kids at the sort of evangelical retreat up at Belgrave Heights in the Hills. And there's a group of us doing improv and we did one where I was part of the camera crew, which was a neutral sort of thing, and the kids weren't reacting. So I decided to turn myself into the villain and we made the whole thing around. So I turned from being a neutral guy to the bad guy, just. And the kids would just go berserk. They love that kind of stuff. You know, kids are the best audience.

They really are.

Improv is so fun. And the good guy be up in the middle of the stage and just saying, if you see the bad guy, you tell me. You tell me. And I'm just creeping up. Don't tell, don't tell. Like that. Okay, just going like that. And the kids are going, but sir, he's there, he's there. And the guy would say, oh, he's where? He's a bear. They just go. They scream and yell. And then I just. To do other things too. You'd be walking underneath, which was unscripted. Walking underneath. And I'd get a bucket of water, tip it over his head. Made me laugh when she went, I mean, it's so fun being a villain. I mean, how could you not want to be the bad guy?

But in franchising, you're the good guy.

I'm definitely the good guy. Definitely the good guy.

And sorry to Charles ears then as well. I think he popped an eardrum when you were doing the laugh because it comes to a pretty high pitch.

So I'm sorry, it's an occupational hazard.

Ms. Charles Workcover claim for sure. That one. We absolutely got a question, guys. Feel free to come up and ask them as well. You can ask him anything you like. As you've just seen. Jim will say anything, anything. So just please come up and ask.

Him if my reason I have trouble going into politics. I just say what I think wouldn't last. Hi.

So my question is not regarding any training, any franchise. My question is regarding yourself.

So how anyone meet your Mrs.

Your wife?

Like your love story?

Oh, how I met her. Well, there was a lady working for me and she heard, Chinese lady, she was doing some work for me and she heard that I was looking for a wife, which she hadn't known, I didn't told her or anything. And then as soon as she heard that, she said, oh, I know some girls that would suit you. So I said, yeah, sure, go for it. So she approached Lee, spent about three days to persuade her to actually meet with me because she didn't think because Lee was sort of married to a businessman who was a pretty. Well anyway, she wasn't too keen on another businessman who was the flashy clothes and the fancy car and all the, you know, costumes and all the rest of it. And she saw me and I was, I was just in this shabby clothes pretty much like now, you know, with holes in my socks and oil on my things and with the worst haircut you can imagine because I used to cut myself like that. And she got admitted my car, which is the crappiest car she had ever. And she's from China. She, she'd never been ever inside such a crappy car. So she thought this guy is nothing like a normal businessman. And then we went off and we. First thing I saw when I saw her because we met at the station. I walked up to see her and I thought, okay, she's pretty. That's what Du said. And then we sat down and had a cup of something at a shopping centre. And I was looking at her and she was just so sparkly and so vivacious and so. Oh my goodness, I'm smitten. I just so much wanted to reach out and touch her hand. I was absolutely head over heels crazy about it. But it took me seven weeks to marry her, so I guess I wasn't that fast. We were engaged within 13 days and that was only because I spent a week in China, sorry in America at a conference which I was so deadly about when I found her, had two dates with her, came back engaged within 13 days of meeting and married as soon afterwards as possible. And very stormy relationship. We have huge fights at times, but jeepers, I'm crazy about her. I love her so much. I just adore her. She is love of my life. She's so wonderful.

There you go. Good question.

Very volatile, but she's just gorgeous.

Good question. Come up and ask your question. Go for it. Really good question. Hi Jim.

So what made you start your business? Like what motivated you to start your business back in the days as a mowing considering you have a very different educational background? Well, mowing was my part time student job. Yeah, see I've been gardening since I was 8. So when I was a student to get some extra income, I Would be, you know, gardening and then mowing lawns. That was. And so when I finished up, I, and I expected to be an academic. That was my expectation. I thought my theory was powerful enough people would be convinced of it. Now it turns out they weren't. And I had no prospect of any sort of academic job, which in retrospect is a blessing because I never could have achieved what I have without money. So when that happened, I just said, okay, I've finished my PhD. I was $35,000 in debt. I had some crappy old equipment and a trailer. What else can I do? Newly married, my wife became pregnant not too long after that too. So I just had to support myself. So that was it. It was the only thing I knew how to do. Mow lawns for a living. So it wasn't really any deep decision. But you did a good job now with 5,000 franchisees. Yeah, yeah. But I started with something that I love doing and I still enjoy gardening. It's a really fun job for me, not for everybody. I think people say it's a freezing cold, rainy day like today. You might think it's so good, but I loved it. I go out in the middle of winter and just do work in the rain in the middle of winter. It's just fun. But then when you do something, you want to do it better. That's the simple thing. You just want to say, how can I do it? How can I improve? And I was just constantly, constantly trying to improve what I did. Making mistakes, making terrible mistakes. I've done so many stupid things. I've gone into business. I don't understand, like mower shop at one time, computer shop, holiday resort, trading exchanges, twice factory. I mean, they've done so many dumb things, but you just keep on doing it. You make a mistake, you try and learn, you keep on. You just keep on changing, keep on doing it better. And the fun thing about business is you can go anywhere. There's nobody here telling me, you can't do this. My father wasn't impressed. I tell you what. First of all, he was an engineer. Have a son who goes out and study arts, history of all things. I mean, that's pretty low grade for an engineer. Not practical at all. But then he thought I might go to Oxford or something and get some prestigious. And that all fell apart and I went out working as a garden. You can imagine. He didn't tell me. I can imagine what he thought. But towards the end of his life, when I had about a thousand franchisees, I said to him once I said, dad, you know, it wasn't such a bad career choice. And he said, nah, guess not.

You know this very good question.

Accidental life. You no idea what life is going to throw up. Who would have thought? You know, when I started gym, somebody asked me how many franchisees I might have. And I said, maybe one day, if it goes really well, maybe a hundred. I've said that. I had no idea.

Come up and ask a question. Go for it.

Hey, Jim, how did you celebrate making your first million? I didn't.

Didn't bother you?

I don't even know what a million dollars is. I mean, if it's a million dollars in the bank, I still can't celebrate it because I always owe so much. Okay, I've got another question as well. What's your favorite tipple? I've noticed, like, you've got your own beer going. Is that something you'd continue or was that just a play? Oh, no, beer's good. Beer's good. Makes a really great price. It's not bad stuff, this. They tell me. I'm not a drinker, so I don't know what it tastes like, but they tell me it's a really good craft beer. So. Oh, lots of things are fun. I mean, chimps is really fun. Monopoly is really fun. You know, I drew this. I drew this. The board. I made up all the cards and put everything in place and all the idea of different services and stuff, that was me. So it was just. It's a really. Business is so fun. This is the thing people don't understand. I can't think of any better job. I think being an academic would be miserable by comparison with all this bureaucracy. A lot of people who've done that and they have all the people telling what to do and they disagree with it. And you can't do this and you can't do that, and you've got to do it this way. And here's all the bureaucracy and here's all the government regulations and the university regulations. There's all this sort of garbage restricting you around and you see all the frustrations and stupidity and you have to go along because you don't own the company, all right? I would not want that, being your own boss. Even if you're your own boss doing one job, you're your own boss. You can do anything. I mean, if you're in gyms, you can't. You got to look after customers, you got to pay your fees, you got to wear uniform. But apart from that, you can really make Whatever you want of it. That, to me, is the fun.

So you're going to do a Jim's Distillery, then?

Well, no, but actually, this is a good point, though, because we didn't make the beer. Because I don't think about making beer.

You didn't even know I agreed to do it. The email to come through now. We talked about it.

This guy.

Yeah, we talked about it.

Yes. So much stuff. A lot of the stuff that goes on in gyms isn't even me. You'd be surprised how little I do. Sometimes I sit around twiddling my thumbs, waiting for a franchisee to contact me and saying, so, not seriously too much, but anyway, the point of it is I've got really good stuff who do it. I don't even use social media. I don't even know what it does. We were talking about Twitter today in an email. I didn't even. I've never been on Twitter. I got no idea how it works. I said, what do you do? What do you want to put a Twitter feed? And he said, you've got to do this and this. I said, all right, have a go at it. I don't even know that. So I'm amazingly ignorant of a lot of things that you think are pretty obvious.

But the beer was too good to pass up because there was a company called Bondi Brewing in Bondi. Okay. They want to do it. They had a batch and they came with the idea. Jim's not a drinker, so.

Yeah, right.

But as a branding opportunity, it's good for us. But what happened was we ran a can design, so they gave us four designs. We ran them online and I picked that can and that looks a bit similar to the Cooper's one. There's a Cooper's green one, which looks similar. Cooper saw the hype of it. They sent us a legal letter and they're trying to say, you know, we're going to let you sell out the rest, but you can't sell anymore. And I thought, stuff this, we gave it to our PR lady. The next thing, Jim's on Channel 10 news talking about in Cooper's legal stash and he's trying to talk about a beer and pouring your beer and stuff at the Herald, son. And for the agent, bring a red canal as well. Then everyone's asking him, how's it taste and stuff, and he's like, I don't drink beer, but if I did, it'll be this fun and stuff. It was quite funny watching him try and be. It's on channel. It's on YouTube. So you type in Jim Penman beer. You can watch it. But Jim does a good job of talking about a beer when he's never drank it in his life, so it was quite good. In the age double spread with the can on the thing.

We do a lot of fun things. It's really. Social media stuff is so fun. I actually bought a rowing machine because I'm very into fitness from Harvey Norman one time and it was pathetic. It was so weak, there was no strength to it, so it was no good at all. So I contacted Harvey Norman, I said, your rowing machine is useless for purpose. And I didn't respond. So then I got this guy out with a camera and I beat it to death with a slate shadow. And that went viral all over the place. Harvey Norman, I'll give you a new, I'll refund your money.

They called us up and yeah, wanted to do like a thing about it.

They didn't even want their records back. So that was good. I did a good job, didn't I?

You did do a very good job. That one's on, the other one's online. A couple of years ago now I wanted to do another beer run. It'll be a full strength beer. Hopefully they do. It'll be different can design, but yeah, they will do another beer run, hopefully.

We have a lot of fun. You know, I go down in the evenings to the national office. We just, we just toss around ideas. So the Gym for Premier 1 was basically. That was Joel's idea because I was always talking about housing regulations. It gets me very steamed up about the way that the houses are too expensive and rents are too hard to find and stuff. It's all to do with zoning and stuff. And I won't go into that anyway. But we've done other things too. Like the first one we did was we're going to buy King Ons and rename it Jim's Island. We're going to start a airline. One of my contacts in News Court rang me up and said, what's this about? What's this about? In line. I said, jason, look at the date. Oh, okay. And then there was the one about Jim Lamb, which is probably the best because people took that seriously. They really did. And all these people just going up and ah, how can you do such a terrible thing? What's wrong with you? Haven't you got any sense of humor? This is an 8 hectare site in suburban Melbourne. How can you declare independence? Don't be so stupid.

You even got the Cartoon in the. They do those cartoons in the Asia place, political ones. A picture of like big statue of King Jim. Look. And Daniel Andrews, it's down there. And he's like, he stepped her over like that. So they fell for a hook, line and sink of that one.

Oh, that was.

It was Jim Coin as well. The cryptocurrency. Oh yeah, that's right. So it was funny.

The response you get. They really, really had an immense interest in these things. They just strike a chord. You just hit something fun idea and then you just get all this publicity.

Any ideas for next year, let us know.

Like you say it's great publicity. It'd be hard to beat gym land. I tell you what.

Well, with this Jim Land, you didn't like it, but we went a little bit early with Jim Land, so they think it's half serious.

Well, you've got released on 31st March. That was a bit of a problem. So really didn't come across. April fool number one story.

It was our number one story in Twitter. I think Jim's mailing was trending number one in Australia for like a day. And then we had all these. We had all these people who don't agree if you're certain views of politics going berserk on Twitter and some pretty big accounts. And it was a double, big thing in the age. The Herald Sundown double page spread on it.

Yeah. Oh, it was so fun. And we were doing videos and stuff. We're conveying knighthoods. We're still selling citizenship. We've raised quite a few thousand dollars for men's shares.

Probably around four grand. Five grand.

Yeah. Which is great. It's a great cause because it's all about men's mental health, which is really big for us. So it's been, it's been a wonderful thing. We've got great publicity. We raised some money for a good cause and raised awareness too.

Stirred up a few people.

Oh, gee, it was so fun though. You can tell I enjoy business, can't you? But you should enjoy business. It is really a good way of living. It really is. I got so many. You know, the next book that I'm got coming out, it's being written now, it's going to be called no Other Success. And it's based on the saying no other success can compensate for failure in the home. And it's talking about the way people have used a franchise to actually have a better life. Men seeing their sons grow up, which they couldn't otherwise, those kinds of things. Talking about the side of it too. I mean, work should be part of a really happy, joyful life. And I would never. I mean, I'm in a fairly senior position, but I dropped my son to school. I mean, to me that's a great privilege. And we talk on the way about all kinds of things and he's a great kid. He's 14 years old and he's just got his kind of mind. He's fascinating to talk to, Aaron. But I can do that because I have my own business. Nobody's going to tell me, you've got to be in the office at 9 o'. Clock. I can work in the middle of the night if I want to. Maybe tomorrow morning. I've got a zoom meeting at 7 o' clock to meet up with some Americans who. They've got funny hours, so it's afternoon for them, but that's okay, that's good, that's fun. But I can still spend the time doing the things that I want to do and they're meaningful. And seeing my children and my grandchildren now and doing the things that are meaningful to me and working on my research project and doing things. Life isn't just about work, it's about life.

Good question.

Thank you.

You want to start Jim's distillery? Let us know. If you're a brewer, let us know.

Let's keep going.

Absolutely. Got a question, guys. Feel free to come up. We've got some more time as well. I've got a lot on the sheet, so if you want to get your question answered, now's a good time to come up. I'll keep going. I've got a few more online I want to get to. So McPhee online. He watches our YouTube and stuff. He says he started when you started the franchise system 38 years ago. He's been an independent for 38 years. He's 70 years now. But he says if he started back again, he would have went with your system, which is a big compliment from someone.

It's very nice.

He's a 38 year independent. He's a good guy, always comments on our stuff.

I have a lot of respect for independents, I really do. The odds are so stacked against them. If you can succeed as an independent, you are really beating the odds. And I take my hat off to anybody who does that. It's been actually good. A lot of the independents were very positive during COVID when I was standing up for them as well as our own people. And a lot of them said to me, I often get two people stop me in the street.

Well, the one thing I think people don't realize is independence is the rates they charge now. Because I did an interview with the guy does another podcast about the. He did a survey, remember that one I sent through about all the independent rates and what they charge now? And it's pretty, it's pretty high up there in regards to comparing what, what we charge and that's generally due to the gyms.

Well, that's one of the things they say they like about us too, because we set a higher rate for the industry. We actually teach the public that you can charge and make a reasonable living out of it. Because the point of this, you don't want to be working for 30 bucks an hour. You're just on slave wages. After you take out your costs, you've got to make decent money. I don't think they make quite as much as us. I know a couple of friends from church who actually got their own businesses and they make a lot less than my guys do. But still they make a living out of it and that's good. And I always, you know, give them hints and ideas and talk about business.

Absolutely. Milani from Haydar Heydar's tuning in, says great info, which is great. Now Haydar's got a. He's actually on a franchise business magazine which I'm going to post online.

Is he? Yeah.

So. Which is a pretty cool photo. So one that we took, which is coming out really soon is the divisional for our cleaning division as well.

That's a great success story. When he came to us, he was a cleaner. He actually had his own business but he was cleaning by himself for himself. Washing floors, cleaning toilets. He's now, I don't know, multi.

Multi cleaning to cleaning up is what we call.

Yeah, he's got. There's well over a thousand franchisees in the clean divisions that he looks after. He runs the contract department too. He also runs it because he does a good job of that. So he's a really great guy. He's got some great people in that division too, like Ali, his brother in law.

Yep. Guys, you have some more questions, feel free to come up. Still got some more time for him as well. I've got some more here which I'm going to read out real quickly, but please interrupt me as well. One here is from. Is it from Jing Wang from Jim's Cleaning says which new divisions are you looking at adding to the Jim's group or what are new divisions that are maybe on the horizon?

Life Coaching is the one that we.

Yep. Sue.

Sue. Which is just about to start. And then the. What do you call it? Home support one.

Home care.

Yeah, home care.

Yeah.

Those. Those are two that are really good. Hopefully. Driving school.

Driving school with Lance.

Yeah.

Starting.

Yeah, we certainly hope so. It's an obvious one for us because we do very well in that 1525 demographic. Really well. For some reason it's our key, especially girls in that age group. I have no idea why this, but we have that kind of appeal. So it's a very obvious area for us and we want to do it for a long time. So this guy is a. He's a franchisee, isn't he?

Mind Franchisee, Mine.

Franchisee, yeah. He just came and said I want to do it. Very impressive guy. Good record, good earnings, good customer service, well spoken. So go for it. Who knows?

I recommend his interview because he. When you talk about the family situation, he shared his story and he was really open with you about what he earned and stuff. And I'll say he said this online. So I can say basically he went from 18 months, he went from being like minus five or six grand in the bank and not being able to do holidays to having 150k in the bank after 18 months. And he said that. 150, sorry. And he said that online on YouTube. So it's all there. But that's the way he turned his life around. He's just so much happier and better family life just by doing this one decision from reading from trucks to what he was doing.

So we are hungry for talent. It's the amazing thing. And there's no barriers to anybody, you know, a new division can start up with nothing. Just a good track record. We will make it happen. Find great people is. And you know, with 5,000 plus franchisees, you've got a lot of talent out there. One of the problems is spotting it. And again, it's one of the reasons why I like people to contact me because if I hear a good story, actually what you do all the time, I always click across this guy and say, do it.

Do an interview.

Do an interview and record it and spread the good news. And significant number of those people actually gone on to great things within gyms.

Got a couple of questions. If you've got a question, guys, feel free to come up. We've got a little bit of time left. One from Tina from Jim's Cleaning. I'll read it out real quickly. Have you ever considered naming any of your children Jamina? There you go. Jemima or Jamina?

Listen, I'm Married, you know, Come on. One of my sons is called James, but he doesn't shorten the gym. He's definitely James. He's a lawyer, but he's a good guy. Don't take.

You're not a fan of lawyers in general. So you got one good one there.

Yeah, there are some really good lawyers. We've got great lawyers working for us too. They're all super ethical, decent people. So don't believe all the jokes you hear about lawyers. Well, some of them, but go for it.

Hey, being so successful that you are. Sorry, if you were in my position doing a Bachelor of psychology, I'm only in my first year and trying to start up a mowing franchise and buying it with my partner. Unfortunately she's not here with an emergency medical surgery that she just had. But what would you do? Would you push through and continue on doing it part time? I'm just curious what would you do in this position? Because I continue. I really want to do mowing. I really like this.

You do a bachelor in psychology. You know what your chances of becoming a psychologist actually are? Probably about one in a hundred. They have this massive, massive. I know how it works because the guy who ran the research program originally was a professor in psychology. They had this huge intake of psychology students they know perfectly well most of them will never get through. And then a small section of those do an honours degree and a small section of those do a master's and they become psychologists. Frankly, unless you want to go work for a large corporation which is going to love your B.A. i'd say it's a waste of time. I mean that's pretty blunted.

No, no thanks to your honesty. I've got another question for you.

Having said that, if you see how well you go in the business, but you may well find that the opportunities within having a service business is vastly greater than you could possibly make out of your degree. And I think it's a pity that more young people don't recognise the potential, the earnings like, you know, you could be making 150 grand a year in 12 months.

Yeah, that's looking pretty good.

And that's not extreme. There are people who've done better than that in that time. So you've got to come in and see how good you are at it. Whether you have the talent, whether you can be self critical, whether you can, whether you can change the way you do it, whether you've got the work ethic or the customer care, those kinds of things. Whether you've got what it takes. But if you have what it takes, you can go vastly better in your own business than you could dream of going through a ba.

Now thank you for that.

I'll give you an example to not play the other side of this one, but we do have a franchisee. I've interviewed him for the Mowing podcast and he does law commerce three units and he runs a full time mowing business with multiple employees. So he's doing it at the same time. He's really successful. So it can be done. If you want to do the degree and run it at the same time, we do have people who have done it. It's a lot of work. It is a lot of work organized. But you can go to the Mowing podcast channel and look him up. He's actually. He talks about how he does it every day.

I was doing 60 hours a week and also doing full time at uni as well. But my second question was, you've got.

A great work ethic. Good start.

Yes, really tired. But second question is what is your best motivational quote if you got one?

Don't really call it motivational. But that saying no other success can compensate for failure in the home. It probably very far up there. I just love the idea of family. I don't think any success is meaningful. I mean somebody ends up a multi billionaire and their kids are useless. I mean what is the point of your life? What have you achieved? You've amassed a whole lot of money. So what? There's a close friend of mine, his brother was actually considerably richer than I am now who committed suicide because he's immensely wealthy, has every material thing you could possibly imagine. But his family life is so screwed up, what is the point of it all? And I think people, people chase after people chase after wealth. They think that if I have more expensive stuff I'll be better off. I just don't think that really works. Jesus said harder rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven than a camel to go through the eye of a needle. I think there's a lot of truth in that kind of saying. So yeah, a lot of my motivation comes from the Bible. I mean I'm a Christian so it's fairly obvious. But the parable of the talents, that's a lot. My motivation Parable of talents is a great story because it says that it doesn't matter how capable you are, it's what you do with whatever gifts you may have and even if you're not the most capable. And I'm nothing like someone like an Elon Musk or one of those guys, Bill Gates or one of those kinds of characters. I'm just not at their level. So God's given me certain abilities. He wants me to use my abilities the best I can. That's my responsibility. Cool.

Thanks. Jim, your question.

That's a good question. Give this guy a prize.

All right, he'll get one. He'll get one.

All right.

If you got one more, we've got time for one more. If not. No.

Cool.

All right, we'll pick the. Who was your three favorite ones for the first pick of the prize. And everyone ask a question.

Another one about the villain who said that.

Villain question. Yeah, I think I both had you two because you both asked similar things. So maybe you want to come up and pick what you like. Come up here, Take what you like first.

Not playing? Yeah.

Cheers.

There's more. There's more beer if you want it.

There's more beer and stuff. And wine. Monopoly.

Cool.

Go for it. Yep. And what else would you like?

Cool.

And what about the third one with the last question?

Yeah, the other one. Psychology.

The last question with the gentleman with the hat. Do you want to come up and pick whatever you like?

Yeah.

Yep.

Good question. Don't have to buy it, you know.

Grab whatever you like.

The book would be.

The book would be interesting. There you go. Cool. What we'll do. And everyone else who asked a question, come see me at the end. And you can take anything you'd like from here as well. I will say as well, it's a really good time to get photos with Jim now because we've got a really good light. It's more relaxed. Wednesday's chaos. There's people throwing phones and stuff everywhere. So if you want a photo with Jim now or whatever, a chat, now's a really good time. We'll do with the lights. Thank you very much for your attention and have a good luck for the rest of your training week as well. We wish you luck. Ta.

But still, they make a living out of it, and that's good. And they always, you know, give them hints and ideas and talk about business.

Absolutely. Milani from Haydar. Haydar's tuning in, says great info, which is great. Now Haydar's got a. He's actually on a franchise business magazine which I'm going to post online.

Is he? Yeah.

So which is pretty cool photo. So one that we took, which is coming out really soon, is the vision of our cleaning division as well.

That's a great success story. When he came to us, he was A cleaner. He actually had his own business but he was cleaning by himself for himself. Washing floors, cleaning toilets. He's now multi. Multi.

Went from cleaning to cleaning up is what we call.

Yeah, he's got. There's well over a thousand franchisees in the clean divisions that he looks after. He runs the contract department too. He also runs it because he does a good job of that. So he's a really great guy. He's got some great people in that division too, like Ali, his brother in law.

Yep. Guys, you have some more questions, feel free to come up. Still got some more time for them as well. I've got some more here which I'm going to read out real quickly but please interrupt me as well. One here is from. Is it from Jing Wang from Jim's Cleaning says which new divisions are you looking at adding to the gyms group or what are new divisions that are maybe on the horizon?

Life coaching is the one that we're.

Yep. Sue.

Sue. Which is just about to start and then the.

What do you call it?

Home support one.

Home care.

Yeah, home care. Yeah, yeah, those are two that are really good. Hopefully driving school.

Driving school with Lancia starting out.

We certainly hope so. It's an obvious one for us because we do very well in that 1525 demographic. Really well. For some reason it's our key, especially girls in that age group. I have no idea why this but we have that kind of appeal. So it's a very obvious area for us and we want to do it for a long time. So this guy's a. He's a franchisee, isn't he?

Mine franchisee.

Mine franchisee. Yeah, he just came and said I want to do it. Very impressive guy. Good record, good earnings, good customer service. Well spoken. So go for it. Who knows.

I recommend his interview because he. When you talk about the family situation, he shared his story and he was really open with you about what he earned and stuff. And I'll say it, he said this online so I can say. But basically he went from 18 months. He went from being like minus five or six grand in the bank and not being able to do holidays to having 150k the bank after 18 months. And he said that. 150. Sorry. And he said that online on YouTube. So it's all then. But that's the way he turned his life around. He's just so much happier and better family life just by doing this one decision. From reading from trucks to what he was doing.

We are hungry for talent. It's the Amazing thing. And there's no barriers to anybody, you know, a new division can start up with nothing, just a good track record. We will make it happen. Buying great people is. And you know, with 5,000 plus franchisees, you've got a lot of talent out there. One of the problems is spotting it. And again, it's one reason why I like people to contact me because if I hear a good story, actually what you do all the time, I always click across this guy and say, do it.

Do an interview.

Do an interview and record it and spread the good news. And significant number of those people actually gone on to great things within gyms.

Got a couple of questions. If you've got a question, guys, feel free to come up. We've got a little bit of time left. One from Tina from Jim's Cleaning. I'll read it out real quickly. Have you ever considered naming any of your children Jamina, Jemina or Jamina?

Listen, I'm married, you know, come on. One of my sons is called James, but he doesn't shorten the gym. He's definitely James. He's a lawyer, but he's a good guy. Don't take.

You're not a fan of lawyers in general. So you got one good one there.

Yeah, there are some really good lawyers. We've got great lawyers working for us too. They're all super ethical, decent people. So don't believe all the jokes you hear about lawyers. Well, some of them, but go for it.

Hey, being so successful that you are. Sorry. If you were my position, doing a Bachelor of psychology. I'm only in my first year and trying to start up a mowing franchise and buying it with my partner. Unfortunately she's not here with an emergency medical surgery that she just had. But what would you do? Would you push through and continue on doing it part time? I'm just curious, what would you do in this position? Because I continue. I really want to do. Moe, I really like this.

You do a bachelor in psychology. You know what your chances of becoming a psychologist actually are probably about one in a hundred. They have massive, massive. I know how it works because the guy who ran the research program recently was a professor in psychology. They had this huge intake of psychology students. They know perfectly well most of them will never get through. And then a small section of those do an honours degree and a small section of those do a master's and they become psychologists. Frankly, unless you want to go work for a large corporation, which is going to love your B.A. i'd say it's a waste of time. I mean, that's pretty blunt.

No, no, thank you. Honestly, I've got another question for you.

Having said that, having said that, if you see how well you go in the business, but you may well find that the opportunities within having a service business is vastly greater than you could possibly make out of your degree. And I think it's a pity that more young people don't recognize the potential, the earnings like, you know, you could be making, you could be making 150 grand a year in 12 months.

Yeah, that's. It's looking pretty round, pretty good.

And that's not extreme. There are people who've done better than that in that time. So you've got to come in and see how good you are at it. Whether you have the talent, whether you can be so critical, whether you can with. Whether you can change the way you do it, whether you've got the work ethic, customer care, those kinds of things. Whether you've got what it takes. But if you have what it takes, you can go vastly better in your own business than you ever could dream of going through a ba.

Thank you for that.

I'll give you an example to not play the other side of this one, but we do have a franchisee. I've interviewed him for the Mowing podcast and he does law commerce three units and he runs a full time mowing business with multiple employees. So he's doing it at the same time and he's very successful. So it can be done. If you want to do the degree and run it at the same time. We do have people who have done it.

Yep.

It's a lot of work. It is a lot of work, organized. But you can go to the Mowing podcast channel and you look him up. He's actually. He talks about how he does it every day.

I was doing 60 hours a week and also doing full time at uni as well. But my second question was, you got.

A great work ethic though. Good start.

Yes, really tired. But second question is, what is your best motivational quote? If you got one.

Don't whether you call it motivational. But that saying no other success can compensate for failure in the home is probably very far up there. I just love the idea of family. I don't think any success is meaningful. I mean, somebody ends up a multi billionaire and their kids are useless. I mean, what is the point of your life? What have you achieved? You've amassed a whole lot of money. So what? There's a close friend of mine, his brother was actually considerably richer than I am now, who committed suicide because he's immensely wealthy, has every material thing you could possibly imagine, but his family life is so screwed up, what is the point of it all? And I think people chase after. People chase after wealth. They think that if I have more expensive stuff, I'll be better off. I just don't think that really works. Jesus said, harder rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven than a camel to go through the eye of a needle. And I think there's a lot of truth in that kind of saying. So, yeah, a lot of my motivation comes from the Bible. I mean, I'm a Christian, so it's fairly obvious. But the parable of the talents, that's a lot. My motivation. Parable of Talents is a great story because it says that it doesn't matter how capable you are. It's what you do with whatever gifts you may have. And even if you're not the most capable person. And I'm nothing like someone like an Elon Musk or one of those guys, Bill Gates or one of those kinds of characters. I'm just not at their level. So God's given me certain abilities. He wants me to use my abilities the best I can. That's my responsibility. Cool.

Thanks. Jim.

Your question.

That's a good question. Give this guy a prize.

All right, he'll get one. He'll get one. All right. If you got one more, we've got time for one more. If not. No. Cool. All right, we'll pick the. Who was your three favorite ones for the first pick of the prize? And everyone ask a question.

Another one about the villain. Who said that?

The villain question. Yeah. I think I both had you two because you both asked similar things. So maybe you want to come up and pick what you like. Come up here. Take what you like first.

Not lame. Yeah. There's more beer if you want it.

Yeah, there's more beer and stuff. And wine Monopoly.

Cool. Go for it.

Yep. And what else would you like?

Cool.

And what about the third one with the last question? The last question with the gentleman with the hat? Do you want to come up and pick whatever you like?

Yeah.

Yep.

Good question. Don't have to buy it now.

Do whatever you like.

The book would be.

The book would be interesting.

Yeah. What we'll do. And everyone else who asked a question, come see me at the end.